Category Archives: Virtual Reality

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As computing and display technology continues to relentlessly advance, it seems inevitable that the virtual-reality and augmented-reality industries will benefit. In fact, research firm Digi-Capital estimates that the combined augmented and virtual reality space will grow to represent a $120 billion market by 2020, up from less than $5 billion this year.

But finding the best virtual-reality stocks to profit along the way is easier said than done, especially as the price of many of those stocks already reflects much of that growth potential. Tohelp get you started, then, here are three beaten-up virtual-reality stocks to consider adding to your portfolio.

First, GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO)is striving to expand the scope of its business to play a key role enabling the rise of virtual reality through media capture and software services.

GoPro's OMNI VR rig. Image source: GoPro,

More specifically, GoPro offers compelling virtual-reality hardware rigs such as Omni, a synchronized six-camera spherical array that allows each camera to act as one. And to help optimize those spherical videos, last year GoPro acquired Kolor, a leader in virtual reality and spherical media software solutions. Under GoPro's umbrella, Kolor's software enables users to combine multiple images or videos to produce high-res panoramic or spherical content, which can then be displayed on mobile devices, on web browsers, or in virtual-reality environments.

As it stands, however, GoPro still derives the bulk of its revenue from sales of its core action-camera devices. And shares of GoPro are down nearly 70% over the past year as of this writing, as demand for those cameras has waned.

It doesn't help that GoPro's highest-end HERO4 Black and Silver cameras were introduced nearly two years ago. And the company botched last year's release of its (now) more affordable HERO4 Session model by introducing the compact camera at too nhigh a price point, only to subsequently drop its priceby $100two times in five months to its current MSRP of $199.

But as of GoPro's second-quarter 2016 report last month, the company was still on track to launch both its new HERO5 series cameras and its new Karma quadcopter in time for the lucrative holiday season, which will mark what GoPro's founding CEO, Nick Woodman, describes as the "largest introduction of products in our history." If GoPro is able to follow through on that launch, it could be exactly what the company needs to once again start delivering sustained, profitable growth.

Next, no virtual- or augmented-reality platform would be complete without a decent motion-sensing chip to enable the experience. That's whereInvenSense (NYSE:INVN)comes into play.

Image source: InvenSense

As it stands,shares of InvenSense are down around 30% year to date on softness in the mobile market. Butthat decline would have been even worse if an analyst upgrade hadn't sent shares of InvenSense soaring a few weeks ago. Incidentally, that analyst -- Pacific Crest's John Vinh -- singled out the "significant opportunity" InvenSense's chips have to further penetrate the market for entry-level and mid-tier devices, many of which don't include high-quality gyroscope chips required for their users to enjoy augmented-reality platforms and games. One prominent recent example Vinh mentioned is the unprecedented popularity of augmented-reality game Pokemon Go.

That sentiment also echoed the thoughts of InvenSense CEO Behrooz Abdi two weeks earlier, when he stated, "Given strong consumer demand, we expect to see the emergence of many more augmented reality applications and games beyond Pokmon Go, and we believe that their proliferation in mobile devices will expand our TAMs to be mid-tier and low-tier smartphone markets for high-performance gyro."

Indeed, as virtual and augmented reality continue to become more ubiquitous, InvenSense should be better off for it.

Finally, consider organic LED (OLED) technologistUniversal Display (NASDAQ:OLED), shares of which are technicallyupmore than 60% over the past year but also trade more than 20% below their 52-week-high as of this writing, thanks to the company's weaker-than-expected second-quarter 2016 report earlier this month.

Image source: Universal Display

But as Iwroteshortly after that report, our market was recoiling after Universal Display management told investors there would be a roughly six-month delay in UDC's expected ramp in revenue growth -- which isn't entirely surprising, given the number of variables underlying that growth in these early stages of the OLED industry. To blame, UDC says, were delays in the adoption of new higher-margin OLED emitter materials and customers' more efficient use of OLED materials ahead of their own impending ramps in OLED manufacturing capacity. But over the longer term, Univeral Display should still realize that growth, even if it takes more time than expected.

More pertinent to our topic, Universal Display is poised to benefit from virtual reality as its flagship phosphorescent OLED materials enable displays that are more compact, can be made flexible and even semi-transparent, and sport richer colors and deeper blacks than any competing display technology can offer. All of these features make OLED displays ideally suited to creating more immersive virtual- and augmented-reality solutions.

For patient investors willing to watch Universal Display's long-term story continue to unfold, I think the pullback represents a perfect opportunity to open or add to a position.

Steve Symingtonowns shares of Universal Display.The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends InvenSense and GoPro.The Motley Fool recommends Universal Display.Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

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3 Beaten-Up Virtual-Reality Stocks: Are They Bargains? -- The ...

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GeoVisionary was developed by Virtalis in collaboration with the British Geological Survey as specialist software for high-resolution visualisation of spatial data.

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AT LEYLAND TRUCKS WE HAVE EXPERIENCED SAVINGS IN EXCESS OF 40% WHEN INVESTING IN THE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STAGE OF BRINGING A NEW TRUCK TO MARKET.

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VR, Virtual Reality | Virtalis

Virtual reality is getting the presidential treatment.

In honor of the centennial celebration of the National Park Service, President Obama is set to make his virtual-reality debut in a video filmed on his family's visit to Yosemite Valley in June.

In a partnership between National Geographic and the virtual-reality company Oculus, viewers get an up-close 3-D, 360-degree experience to bask in some of the country's most scenic views with its most powerful occupant. The piece was directed and produced by Felix & Paul Studios, which was the creative lead behind the experience and used its own technology to shoot and edit the piece.

In a Facebook post Thursday, Obama called Yosemite "one of the most stunning places I've ever been."

"I get to share that experience with you -- in a 360 degree view," he noted. "Thanks to some high-tech virtual reality cameras, you can stand amid Yosemite's giant sequoia groves or float on Mirror Lake in a canoe. I checked this out for the first time yesterday. It was pretty surreal, like being transported back into the park."

Obama narrates portions of the video, describing the importance of national parks to generations of Americans. He is also shown talking with a park ranger, joking with a group of children and standing on a bridge with the first daughters and the first lady.

But the Secret Service is notably absent from the videos. Thats because the agents were instructed to hide behind trees in the park, a White House official told ABC News.

The video, available to download for Oculus users, is also up for viewing in 2-D format on National Geographic's Facebook page. Watch here on your mobile device.

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The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit franchise honors tradition of innovation by introducing a series of first-of-their-kind virtual reality experiences to go along with the print issue and digital extensions, including an all new SI Swimsuit App and fully responsive digital destination on SI.com/swimsuit. The VR content will feature behind the scenes immersive experiences at the famed SI Swimsuit shoots with some of the world's most beautiful models at some of the most exotic locations on the planet, beginning today with former Swimsuit cover models Nina Agdal, Hannah Davis and Irina Shayk.

SI Swimsuit partnered with the award-winning VR firm Wevr to produce this exclusive content utilizing the most cutting edge VR technology on the market.

The VR content was all shot over a series of days in the Dominican Republic at the same time as photo and video shoots were taking place. The suite of content offers a mix of experiences, form one-on-one, intimate access with the models and the beautiful surroundings to transporting the viewer to actually being on set of a cover-style shoot where you can look over your shoulder and see the full crew behind you. These experiences were designed to offer something different every time and to have some fun with different types of interaction.

"Sports Illustrated Swimsuit has a long tradition of innovation, from the first ever Swimsuit photo shoot on Antarctica to a sub-orbital swimsuit photo shoot in zero gravity," explained Creative Director Christoper Hercik. "This years virtual reality shoot answers the question we get every day: 'What is it like to be on a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit photo shoot?'.

"Partnering with WEVR for our first-ever VR shoot allowed us to utilize both of our collective resources, including their best in-market technology and creative network, to help direct, produce and post produce this one-of-a-kind experience. Our partnership was phenomenal from start to finish and allowed us to create the highest-quality, fully-immersive experience. We want our fans to experience swimsuit on every level."

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Virtual Reality - SI.com

Virtual Reality is finally here after years of anticipation, and it's been well worth the wait. At NVIDIA we've been working from the beginning of VR's resurgence to create technologies, tools and best practices that enhance the VR experience.

Now, with the new GeForce GTX 1080 and the new Pascal Architecture, we're enabling a new level of presence in VR by introducing new technologies that will make your VR experiences more immersive and realistic.

With VR performance is key - Virtual Reality headsets render games and applications at a resolution equivalent to 3024x1680, and need to do so at a sustained 90 FPS. Failure to maintain a constant 90 FPS results in stuttering and hitching that ruin the experience.

With the new GeForce GTX 1080, Virtual Reality performance is up to 2X faster than with the GeForce GTX TITAN X. This remarkable improvement comes courtesy of the amazing graphics horsepower of Pascal, combined with our new Simultaneous Multi-Projection technology, which enables new VRWorks Lens Matched Shading and Single Pass Stereo rendering techniques.

For decades PC gamers enthusiastically enjoyed their games on flat 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 monitors. Thankfully technology has advanced, and we can now play with three monitors in NVIDIA Surround, on curved monitors, and even in Virtual Reality.

With the new Pascal-architecture Simultaneous Multi-Projection technology we can implement several new techniques that improve your experience on these displays. And in Virtual Reality, improve performance, too.

The first of these new Virtual Reality techniques is Lens Matched Shading, which builds upon the Multi-Res Shading technology introduced alongside our previous-generation Maxwell architecture. Lens Matched Shading increases pixel shading performance by rendering more natively to the unique dimensions of VR display output. This avoids rendering many pixels that would otherwise be discarded before the image is output to the VR headset.

Single Pass Stereo turbocharges geometry performance by allowing the head-mounted display's left and right displays to share a single geometry pass. We're effectively halving the workload of traditional VR rendering, which requires the GPU to draw geometry twice once for the left eye and once for the right eye.

This improvement is especially important for geometry-heavy scenes, and those featuring significant levels of tessellation, which remains the most effective way of adding real detail to objects and surfaces in VR.

With tessellation, affected game elements can be accurately lit, shadowed and shaded, and can be examined up close in Virtual Reality. With other solutions, such as Bump Mapping or Parallax Occlusion Mapping, the simulation of geometric detail breaks down when the player approaches or examines affected objects from any angle, which harms immersion. By increasing geometry performance and tessellation by up to 2x, developers are able to add more detail that players can examine up close, significantly improving the look of the game and the player's level of presence.

Together, Pascal's improved performance, and new Single Pass Stereo and Lens Matched Shading significantly improve the Virtual Reality experience for GeForce GTX users.

NVIDIA has spent decades working to perfect 3D graphics, but with VR great graphics demand great audio to create a sense of presence. To this end, NVIDIA has created a game-changing advancement called VRWorks Audio.

Today's VR applications provide positional audio, telling users where a sound comes from within an environment. However, sound in the real world reflects more than just location of the audio source -- sound is a function of the physical environment. For example, a voice in a small room will sound different than the same voice outdoors because of the reflections and reverb caused by the sound bouncing off the walls of the room. Using NVIDIA's OptiX ray tracing engine, VRWorks Audio is able to trace the path of sound in an environment in real-time, delivering physical audio that fully reflects the size, shape, and material properties of the virtual world.

Simply put, we're able to simulate physically-accurate, super realistic real-time audio using the power of your graphics card.

If you've been a gamer for some time you've almost certainly played a game with CPU or GPU PhysX, or our new FleX effects. These technologies add more realistic physics effects, and enable interactions between the player's character and the world they're inhabiting. In Virtual Reality, more often than not you are the player in the center of the action, directly interacting with objects and the world itself. As such, the world needs to react realistically to maintain the user's sense of presence in the virtual world.

Realistically modelling touch interactions and environmental behavior is critical for delivering full presence in VR. And by adding touch interactivity with haptics we can amplify the degree of immersion.

Existing VR experiences deliver these effects through a combination of positional tracking, hand controllers, and haptics. With NVIDIA's new VR Touch PhysX Constraint Solver, we can instead detect when a hand controller interacts with a virtual object and enable the game engine to provide a physically-accurate visual and haptic response.

By providing this improved, ready-made, all-in-one solution to game developers we can save them time, effort and money, and improve the experiences of gamers.

As you might expect, we're also bringing our PhysX and FleX visual effects to VR, so that interactions, events and actions involving the player or occurring around the player are realistic, physically accurate, and representative of what players would expect to see in the real world.

Over the years PhysX and FleX have created visual effects for just about anything you can imagine - explosions, cloth, water, snow, gore, volumetric weather effects, and on and on, and on. PhysX has done them all, and more, and now your own actions in the virtual world can influence the actions, reactions, and interactions of these effects.

The great news is that you won't have to wait long to experience VRWorks Graphics, VRWorks Audio, and VR PhysX - all three are fully utilized in "NVIDIA VR Funhouse", a NVIDIA-developed VR experience that's coming soon. Learn more about this highly immersive, extremely entertaining experience here.

Combined, the technologies discussed in this story form VRWorks, a comprehensive suite of features that allow developers to create more detailed, more immersive, and faster-performing VR experiences that you won't want to miss.

To benefit from these features, and those released previously, register your interest now to be notified when the GeForce GTX 1080 pre-order program begins.

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Virtual Reality | Technology | GeForce

The definition of virtual reality comes, naturally, from the definitions for both virtual and reality. The definition of virtual is near and reality is what we experience as human beings. So the term virtual reality basically means near-reality. This could, of course, mean anything but it usually refers to a specific type of reality emulation.

We know the world through our senses and perception systems. In school we all learned that we have five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. These are however only our most obvious sense organs. The truth is that humans have many more senses than this, such as a sense of balance for example. These other sensory inputs, plus some special processing of sensory information by our brains ensures that we have a rich flow of information from the environment to our minds.

Everything that we know about our reality comes by way of our senses. In other words, our entire experience of reality is simply a combination of sensory information and our brains sense-making mechanisms for that information. It stands to reason then, that if you can present your senses with made-up information, your perception of reality would also change in response to it. You would be presented with a version of reality that isnt really there, but from your perspective it would be perceived as real. Something we would refer to as a virtual reality.

So, in summary, virtual reality entails presenting our senses with a computer generated virtual environment that we can explore in some fashion.

Answering what is virtual reality in technical terms is straight-forward. Virtual reality is the term used to describe a three-dimensional, computer generated environment which can be explored and interacted with by a person. That person becomes part of this virtual world or is immersed within this environment and whilst there, is able to manipulate objects or perform a series of actions.

Although we talk about a few historical early forms of virtual reality elsewhere on the site, today virtual reality is usually implemented using computer technology. There are a range of systems that are used for this purpose, such as headsets, omni-directional treadmills and special gloves. These are used to actually stimulate our senses together in order to create the illusion of reality.

This is more difficult than it sounds, since our senses and brains are evolved to provide us with a finely synchronized and mediated experience. If anything is even a little off we can usually tell. This is where youll hear terms such asimmersiveness and realism enter the conversation. These issues that divide convincing or enjoyable virtual reality experiences from jarring or unpleasant ones are partly technical and partly conceptual. Virtual reality technology needs to take our physiology into account. For example, the human visual field does not look like a video frame. We have (more or less) 180 degrees of vision and although you are not always consciously aware of your peripheral vision, if it were gone youd notice. Similarly when what your eyes and the vestibular system in your ears tell you are in conflict it can cause motion sickness. Which is what happens to some people on boats or when they read while in a car.

If an implementation of virtual reality manages to get the combination of hardware, software and sensory synchronicity just right it achieves something known as a sense of presence. Where the subject really feels like they are present in that environment.

This may seems like a lot of effort, and it is! What makes the development of virtual reality worthwhile? The potential entertainment value is clear. Immersive films and video games are good examples. The entertainment industry is after all a multi-billion dollar one and consumers are always keen on novelty. Virtual reality has many other, more serious, applications as well.

There are a wide variety of applications for virtual reality which include:

Virtual reality can lead to new and exciting discoveries in these areas which impact upon our day to day lives.

Wherever it is too dangerous, expensive or impractical to do something in reality, virtual reality is the answer. From trainee fighter pilots to medical applications trainee surgeons, virtual reality allows us to take virtual risks in order to gain real world experience. As the cost of virtual reality goes down and it becomes more mainstream you can expect more serious uses, such as education or productivity applications, to come to the fore. Virtual reality and its cousin augmented reality could substantively change the way we interface with our digital technologies. Continuing the trend of humanising our technology.

There are many different types of virtual reality systems but they all share the same characteristics such as the ability to allow the person to view three-dimensional images. These images appear life-sized to the person.

Plus they change as the person moves around their environment which corresponds with the change in their field of vision. The aim is for a seamless join between the persons head and eye movements and the appropriate response, e.g. change in perception. This ensures that the virtual environment is both realistic and enjoyable.

A virtual environment should provide the appropriate responses in real time- as the person explores their surroundings. The problems arise when there is a delay between the persons actions and system response or latency which then disrupts their experience. The person becomes aware that they are in an artificial environment and adjusts their behaviour accordingly which results in a stilted, mechanical form of interaction.

The aim is for a natural, free-flowing form of interaction which will result in a memorable experience.

Virtual reality is the creation of a virtual environment presented to our senses in such a way that we experience it as if we were really there. It uses a host of technologies to achieve this goal and is a technically complex feat that has to account for our perception and cognition. It has both entertainment and serious uses. The technology is becoming cheaper and more widespread. We can expect to see many more innovative uses for the technology in the future and perhaps a fundamental way in which we communicate and work thanks to the possibilities of virtual reality.

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What is Virtual Reality? - Virtual Reality - vrs.org.uk

About the VRAC

Iowa State Universitys Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) is an interdisciplinary research center focused at the intersection of humans and technology, aimed broadly at enhancing the productivity and creativity of people. The VRACs world-class research infrastructure supports the research of faculty and students representing all seven of ISUs colleges, as well as the interests of collaborators from several federal agencies and numerous industry partners.

The VRAC research community spans a wide spectrum of disciplinary experts with particular strengths in state-of-the-art interaction technologies including virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) as well as mobile computing, developmental robotics, and haptics interaction. The VRAC community is also skilled at human centered design and user experience (UX) evaluation as well as assessing the effectiveness of new interaction modalities via formal user studies.

To complement its research mission the VRAC established and now leads ISUs interdepartmental graduate major in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). With more than 200 students currently enrolled, the HCI program is now the largest interdepartmental graduate major at ISU and offers PhD, MS and Professional Certificate degrees to resident and on-line student communities.

A friendly, efficient, service-oriented staff supports the collaborative interdisciplinary culture at VRAC. Administrative support facilitates research proposal preparation and submission, grant administration, purchasing and student appointments, while technical staff provides hardware maintenance, system integration, vendor coordination and technical assistance to the research community.

The hottest app making the news these days is an example of one of VRACs research areas augmented reality. Continue reading

2015 REU Intern Jordan Zonner cites Dr. Sharmin Sikich and the IINSPIRE-LSAMP program at Doane University with helping her find Continue reading

One of the largest conferences held annually for new research in human computer interaction is the Association for Computing Machinerys Continue reading

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VRAC | Virtual Reality Applications Center

Immersion into virtual reality is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.

The name is a metaphoric use of the experience of submersion applied to representation, fiction or simulation. Immersion can also be defined as the state of consciousness where a "visitor" (Maurice Benayoun) or "immersant" (Char Davies)'s awareness of physical self is transformed by being surrounded in an artificial environment; used for describing partial or complete suspension of disbelief, enabling action or reaction to stimulations encountered in a virtual or artistic environment. The degree to which the virtual or artistic environment faithfully reproduces reality determines the degree of suspension of disbelief. The greater the suspension of disbelief, the greater the degree of presence achieved.

According to Ernest W. Adams, author and consultant on game design,[1] immersion can be separated into three main categories:

Staffan Bjrk and Jussi Holopainen, in Patterns In Game Design,[2] divide immersion into similar categories, but call them sensory-motoric immersion, cognitive immersion and emotional immersion, respectively. In addition to these, they add a new category:

Presence, a term derived from the shortening of the original "telepresence," is a phenomenon enabling people to interact with and feel connected to the world outside their physical bodies via technology. It is defined as a person's subjective sensation of being there in a scene depicted by a medium, usually virtual in nature (Barfield et al., 1995).[full citation needed] Most designers focus on the technology used to create a high-fidelity virtual environment; however, the human factors involved in achieving a state of presence must be taken into account as well. It is the subjective perception, although generated by and/or filtered through human-made technology, that ultimately determines the successful attainment of presence (Thornson, Goldiez, & Le, 2009).[full citation needed]

Virtual reality glasses can produce a visceral feeling of being in a simulated world, a form of spatial immersion called Presence. According to Oculus VR, the technology requirements to achieve this visceral reaction are low-latency and precise tracking of movements.[4][5][6]

Michael Abrash gave a talk on VR at Steam Dev Days in 2014.[7] According to the VR research team at Valve, all of the following are needed to establish presence.

Immersive virtual reality is a hypothetical future technology that exists today as virtual reality art projects, for the most part.[8] It consists of immersion in an artificial environment where the user feels just as immersed as they usually feel in consensus reality.

The most considered method would be to induce the sensations that made up the virtual reality in the nervous system directly. In functionalism/conventional biology we interact with consensus reality through the nervous system. Thus we receive all input from all the senses as nerve impulses. It gives your neurons a feeling of heightened sensation. It would involve the user receiving inputs as artificially stimulated nerve impulses, the system would receive the CNS outputs (natural nerve impulses) and process them allowing the user to interact with the virtual reality. Natural impulses between the body and central nervous system would need to be prevented. This could be done by blocking out natural impulses using nanorobots which attach themselves to the brain wiring, whilst receiving the digital impulses of which describe the virtual world, which could then be sent into the wiring of the brain. A feedback system between the user and the computer which stores the information would also be needed. Considering how much information would be required for such a system, it is likely that it would be based on hypothetical forms of computer technology.

A comprehensive understanding of which nerve impulses correspond to which sensations, and which motor impulses correspond to which muscle contractions will be required. This will allow the correct sensations in the user, and actions in the virtual reality to occur. The Blue Brain Project is the current, most promising research with the idea of understanding how the brain works by building very large scale computer models.

The nervous system would obviously need to be manipulated. Whilst non-invasive devices using radiation have been postulated, invasive cybernetic implants are likely to become available sooner and be more accurate. Manipulation could occur at any stage of the nervous system the spinal cord is likely to be simplest; as all nerves pass through here, this could be the only site of manipulation. Molecular Nanotechnology is likely to provide the degree of precision required and could allow the implant to be built inside the body rather than be inserted by an operation.

A very powerful computer would be necessary for processing virtual reality complex enough to be nearly indistinguishable from consensus reality and interacting with central nervous system fast enough.

An immersive digital environment is an artificial, interactive, computer-created scene or "world" within which a user can immerse themselves.[9]

Immersive digital environments could be thought of as synonymous with virtual reality, but without the implication that actual "reality" is being simulated. An immersive digital environment could be a model of reality, but it could also be a complete fantasy user interface or abstraction, as long as the user of the environment is immersed within it. The definition of immersion is wide and variable, but here it is assumed to mean simply that the user feels like they are part of the simulated "universe". The success with which an immersive digital environment can actually immerse the user is dependent on many factors such as believable 3D computer graphics, surround sound, interactive user-input and other factors such as simplicity, functionality and potential for enjoyment. New technologies are currently under development which claim to bring realistic environmental effects to the players' environment effects like wind, seat vibration and ambient lighting.

To create a sense of full immersion, the 5 senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) must perceive the digital environment to be physically real. Immersive technology can perceptually fool the senses through:

Once the senses reach a sufficient belief that the digital environment is real (it is interaction and involvement which can never be real), the user must then be able to interact with the environment in a natural, intuitive manner. Various immersive technologies such as gestural controls, motion tracking, and computer vision respond to the user's actions and movements. Brain control interfaces (BCI) respond to the user's brainwave activity.

Training and rehearsal simulations run the gamut from part task procedural training (often buttonology, for example: which button do you push to deploy a refueling boom) through situational simulation (such as crisis response or convoy driver training) to full motion simulations which train pilots or soldiers and law enforcement in scenarios that are too dangerous to train in actual equipment using live ordinance.

Computer games from simple arcade to massively multiplayer online game and training programs such as flight and driving simulators. Entertainment environments such as motion simulators that immerse the riders/players in a virtual digital environment enhanced by motion, visual and aural cues. Reality simulators, such as one of the Virunga Mountains in Rwanda that takes you on a trip through the jungle to meet a tribe of mountain gorillas.[10] Or training versions such as one which simulates taking a ride through human arteries and the heart to witness the buildup of plaque and thus learn about cholesterol and health.[11]

In parallel with scientist, artists like Knowbotic Research, Donna Cox, Rebecca Allen, Robbie Cooper, Maurice Benayoun, Char Davies, and Jeffrey Shaw use the potential of immersive virtual reality to create physiologic or symbolic experiences and situations.

Other examples of immersion technology include physical environment / immersive space with surrounding digital projections and sound such as the CAVE, and the use of virtual reality headsets for viewing movies, with head-tracking and computer control of the image presented, so that the viewer appears to be inside the scene. The next generation is VIRTSIM, which achieves total immersion through motion capture and wireless head mounted displays for teams of up to thirteen immersants enabling natural movement through space and interaction in both the virtual and physical space simultaneously.

New fields of studies linked to the immersive virtual reality emerges every day. Researchers see a great potential in virtual reality tests serving as complementary interview methods in psychiatric care.[12] Immersive virtual reality have in studies also been used as an educational tool in which the visualization of psychotic states have been used to get increased understanding of patients with similar symptoms.[13] New treatment methods are available for schizophrenia[14] and other newly developed research areas where immersive virtual reality is expected to achieve melioration is in education of surgical procedures,[15] rehabilitation program from injuries and surgeries[16] and reduction of phantom limb pain.[17]

Simulation sickness, or simulator sickness, is a condition where a person exhibits symptoms similar to motion sickness caused by playing computer/simulation/video games (Oculus Rift is working to solve simulator sickness).[18]

Motion sickness due to virtual reality is very similar to simulation sickness and motion sickness due to films. In virtual reality, however, the effect is made more acute as all external reference points are blocked from vision, the simulated images are three-dimensional and in some cases stereo sound that may also give a sense of motion. Studies have shown that exposure to rotational motions in a virtual environment can cause significant increases in nausea and other symptoms of motion sickness.[19]

Other behavioural changes such as stress, addiction, isolation and mood changes are also discussed to be side-effects caused by immersive virtual reality.[20]

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Immersion (virtual reality) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

by Chris Woodford. Last updated: May 27, 2015.

You'll probably never go to Mars, swim with dolphins, run an Olympic 100 meters, or sing onstage with the Rolling Stones. But if virtual reality ever lives up to its promise, you might be able to do all these thingsand many morewithout even leaving your home. Unlike real reality (the actual world in which we live), virtual reality means simulating bits of our world (or completely imaginary worlds) using high-performance computers and sensory equipment, like headsets and gloves. Apart from games and entertainment, it's long been used for training airline pilots and surgeons and for helping scientists to figure out complex problems such as the structure of protein molecules. How does it work? Let's take a closer look!

Photo: Virtual reality means blocking yourself off from the real world and substituting a computer-generated alternative. Often, it involves wearing a wraparound headset called a head-mounted display, clamping stereo headphones over your ears, and touching or feeling your way around your imaginary home using datagloves (gloves with built-in sensors). Picture by Wade Sisler courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center.

Virtual reality (VR) means experiencing things through our computers that don't really exist. From that simple definition, the idea doesn't sound especially new. When you look at an amazing Canaletto painting, for example, you're experiencing the sites and sounds of Italy as it was about 250 years agoso that's a kind of virtual reality. In the same way, if you listen to ambient instrumental or classical music with your eyes closed, and start dreaming about things, isn't that an example of virtual realityan experience of a world that doesn't really exist? What about losing yourself in a book or a movie? Surely that's a kind of virtual reality?

If we're going to understand why books, movies, paintings, and pieces of music aren't the same thing as virtual reality, we need to define VR fairly clearly. For the purposes of this simple, introductory article, I'm going to define it as:

Putting it another way, virtual reality is essentially:

Artwork: This Canaletto painting of Venice, Italy is believable and in some sense explorable (you can move your eyes around and think about different parts of the picture), but it's not interactive, computer-generated, or immersive, so it doesn't meet our definition of virtual reality: looking at this picture is not like being there. There's nothing to stop us making an explorable equivalent in VR, but we need CGInot oil paintsto do it. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

We can see from this why reading a book, looking at a painting, listening to a classical symphony, or watching a movie don't qualify as virtual reality. All of them offer partial glimpses of another reality, but none are interactive, explorable, or fully believable. If you're sitting in a movie theater looking at a giant picture of Mars on the screen, and you suddenly turn your head too far, you'll see and remember that you're actually on Earth and the illusion will disappear. If you see something interesting on the screen, you can't reach out and touch it or walk towards it; again, the illusion will simply disappear. So these forms of entertainment are essentially passive: however plausible they might be, they don't actively engage you in any way.

VR is quite different. It makes you think you are actually living inside a completely believable virtual world (one in which, to use the technical jargon, you are partly or fully immersed). It is two-way interactive: as you respond to what you see, what you see responds to you: if you turn your head around, what you see or hear in VR changes to match your new perspective.

"Virtual reality" has often been used as a marketing buzzword for compelling, interactive video games or even 3D movies and television programs, none of which really count as VR because they don't immerse you either fully or partially in a virtual world. Search for "virtual reality" in your cellphone app store and you'll find hundreds of hits, even though a tiny cellphone screen could never get anywhere near producing the convincing experience of VR. Nevertheless, things like interactive games and computer simulations would certainly meet parts of our definition up above, so there's clearly more than one approach to building virtual worldsand more than one flavor of virtual reality. Here are a few of the bigger variations:

For the complete VR experience, we need three things. First, a plausible, and richly detailed virtual world to explore; a computer model or simulation, in other words. Second, a powerful computer that can detect what we're going and adjust our experience accordingly, in real time (so what we see or hear changes as fast as we movejust like in real reality). Third, hardware linked to the computer that fully immerses us in the virtual world as we roam around. Usually, we'd need to put on what's called a head-mounted display (HMD) with two screens and stereo sound, and wear one or more sensory gloves. Alternatively, we could move around inside a room, fitted out with surround-sound loudspeakers, onto which changing images are projected from outside. We'll explore VR equipment in more detail in a moment.

A highly realistic flight simulator on a home PC might qualify as nonimmersive virtual reality, especially if it uses a very wide screen, with headphones or surround sound, and a realistic joystick and other controls. Not everyone wants or needs to be fully immersed in an alternative reality. An architect might build a detailed 3D model of a new building to show to clients that can be explored on a desktop computer by moving a mouse. Most people would classify that as a kind of virtual reality, even if it doesn't fully immerse you. In the same way, computer archaeologists often create engaging 3D reconstructions of long-lost settlements that you can move around and explore. They don't take you back hundreds or thousands of years or create the sounds, smells, and tastes of prehistory, but they give a much richer experience than a few pastel drawings or even an animated movie.

What about "virtual world" games like Second Life and Minecraft? Do they count as virtual reality? Although they meet the first four of our criteria (believable, interactive, computer-created and explorable), they don't really meet the fifth: they don't fully immerse you. But one thing they do offer that cutting-edge VR typically doesn't is collaboration: the idea of sharing an experience in a virtual world with other people, often in real time or something very close to it. Collaboration and sharing are likely to become increasingly important features of VR in future.

Virtual reality was one of the hottest, fastest-growing technologies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the rapid rise of the World Wide Web largely killed off interest after that. Even though computer scientists developed a way of building virtual worlds on the Web (using a technology analogous to HTML called Virtual Reality Markup Language, VRML), ordinary people were much more interested in the way the Web gave them new ways to access real realitynew ways to find and publish information, shop, and share thoughts, ideas, and experiences with friends through social media. With Facebook's growing interest in the technology, the future of VR seems likely to be both Web-based and collaborative.

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have put what used to be supercomputer power in our hands and pockets. If we're wandering round the world, maybe visiting a heritage site like the pyramids or a fascinating foreign city we've never been to before, what we want is typically not virtual reality but an enhanced experience of the exciting reality we can see in front of us. That's spawned the idea of augmented reality (AR), where, for example, you point your smartphone at a landmark or a striking building and interesting information about it pops up automatically. Augmented reality is all about connecting the real world we experience to the vast virtual world of information that we've collectively created on the Web. Neither of these worlds is virtual, but the idea of exploring and navigating the two simultaneously does, nevertheless, have things in common with virtual reality. For example, how can a mobile device figure out its precise location in the world? How do the things you see on the screen of your tablet change as you wander round a city? Technically, these problems are similar to the ones developers of VR systems have to solveso there are close links between AR and VR.

Photo: Augmented reality: A heads-up display, like this one used by the US Air Force, superimposes useful, computer-based information on top of the things you see with your own eyes. Picture by Major Chad E. Gibson courtesy of US Air Force.

Close your eyes and think of virtual reality and you probably picture something like our top photo: a geek wearing a wraparound headset (HMD) and datagloves, wired into a powerful workstation or supercomputer. What differentiates VR from an ordinary computer experience (using your PC to write an essay or play games) is the nature of the input and output. Where an ordinary computer uses things like a keyboard, mouse, or (more exotically) speech recognition for input, VR uses sensors that detect how your body is moving. And where a PC displays output on a screen (or a printer), VR uses two screens (one for each eye), stereo or surround-sound speakers, and maybe some forms of haptic (touch and body perception) feedback as well. Let's take a quick tour through some of the more common VR input and output devices.

There are two big differences between VR and looking at an ordinary computer screen: in VR, you see a 3D image that changes smoothly, in real-time, as you move your head. That's made possible by wearing a head-mounted display, which looks like a giant motorbike helmet or welding visor, but consists of two small screens (one in front of each eye), a blackout blindfold that blocks out all other light (eliminating distractions from the real world), and stereo headphones. The two screens display slightly different, stereoscopic images, creating a realistic 3D perspective of the virtual world. HMDs usually also have built-in accelerometers or position sensors so they can detect exactly how your head and body are moving (both position and orientationwhich way they're tilting or pointing) and adjust the picture accordingly. The trouble with HMDs is that they're quite heavy, so they can be tiring to wear for long periods; some of the really heavy ones are even mounted on stands with counterweights.

Photo: The view from inside. A typical HMD has two tiny screens that show different pictures to each of your eyes, so your brain produces a combined 3D (stereoscopic) image. Picture by courtesy of US Air Force.

An alternative to putting on an HMD is to sit or stand inside a room onto whose walls changing images are projected from outside. As you move in the room, the images change accordingly. Flight simulators use this technique, often with images of landscapes, cities, and airport approaches projected onto large screens positioned just outside a mockup of a cockpit. A famous 1990s VR experiment called CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), developed at the University of Illinois by Thomas de Fanti, also worked this way. People moved around inside a large cube-shaped room with semi-transparent walls onto which stereo images were back-projected from outside. Although they didn't have to wear HMDs, they did need stereo glasses to experience full 3D perception.

See something amazing and your natural instinct is to reach out and touch iteven babies do that. So giving people the ability to handle virtual objects has always been a big part of VR. Usually, this is done using datagloves, which are ordinary gloves with sensors wired to the outside to detect hand and figure motions. One technical method of doing this uses fiber-optic cables stretched the length of each finger. Each cable has tiny cuts in it so, as you flex your fingers back and forth, more or less light escapes. A photocell at the end of the cable measures how much light reaches it and the computer uses this to figure out exactly what your fingers are doing. Other gloves use strain gauges, piezoelectric sensors, or electromechanical devices (such as potentiometers) to measure finger movements.

Photos: Left: EXOS datagloves produced by NASA in the 1990s had very intricate external sensors to detect finger movements with high precision. Picture courtesy of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA-MSFC). Right: This more elaborate EXOS glove had separate sensors on each finger segment, wired up to a single ribbon cable connected up to the main VR computer. Picture by Wade Sisler courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center.

Artwork: How a fiber-optic dataglove works. Each finger has a fiber-optic cable stretched along its length. (1) At one end of the finger, a light-emitting diode (LED) shines light into the cable. (2) Light rays shoot down the cable, bouncing off the sides. (3) There are tiny abrasions in the top of each fiber through which some of the rays escape. The more you flex your fingers, the more light escapes. (4) The amount of light arriving at a photocell at the end gives a rough indication of how much you're flexing your finger. (5) A cable carries this signal off to the VR computer. This is a simplified version of the kind of dataglove VPL patented in 1992, and you'll find the idea described in much more detail in US Patent 5,097,252.

Even simpler than a dataglove, a wand is a stick you can use to touch, point to, or otherwise interact with a virtual world. It has position or motion sensors (such as accelerometers) built in, along with mouse-like buttons or scroll wheels. Originally, wands were clumsily wired into the main VR computer; increasingly, they're wireless.

Photo: A typical handheld virtual reality controller (complete with elastic bands), looking not so different from a video game controller. Photo courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center.

VR has always suffered from the perception that it's little more than a glorified arcade gameliterally a "dreamy escape" from reality. In that sense, "virtual reality" can be an unhelpful misnomer; "alternative reality," "artificial reality," or "computer simulation" might be better terms. The key thing to remember about VR is that it really isn't a fad or fantasy waiting in the wings to whistle people off to alternative worlds; it's a hard-edged practical technology that's been routinely used by scientists, doctors, dentists, engineers, architects, archaeologists, and the military for about the last 30 years. What sorts of things can we do with it?

Difficult and dangerous jobs are hard to train for. How can you safely practice taking a trip to space, landing a jumbo jet, making a parachute jump, or carrying out brain surgery? All these things are obvious candidates for virtual reality applications. As we've seen already, flight cockpit simulators were among the earliest VR applications; they can trace their history back to mechanical simulators developed by Edwin Link in the 1920s. Just like pilots, surgeons are now routinely trained using VR. In a 2008 study of 735 surgical trainees from 28 different countries, 68 percent said the opportunity to train with VR was "good" or "excellent" for them and only 2 percent rated it useless or unsuitable.

Photo: Flight training is a classic application of virtual reality, though it doesn't use HMDs or datagloves. Instead, you sit in a pretend cockpit with changing images projected onto giant screens to give an impression of the view you'd see from your plane. The cockpit is a meticulous replica of the one in a real airplane with exactly the same instruments and controls. Photo by Javier Garcia courtesy of US Air Force.

Anything that happens at the atomic or molecular scale is effectively invisible unless you're prepared to sit with your eyes glued to an electron microscope. But suppose you want to design new materials or drugs and you want to experiment with the molecular equivalent of LEGO. That's another obvious application for virtual reality. Instead of wrestling with numbers, equations, or two-dimensional drawings of molecular structures, you can snap complex molecules together right before your eyes. This kind of work began in the 1960s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Frederick Brooks launched GROPE, a project to develop a VR system for exploring the interactions between protein molecules and drugs.

Photo: If you're heading to Mars, a trip in virtual reality could help you visualize what you'll find when you get there. Picture courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center.

Apart from its use in things like surgical training and drug design, virtual reality also makes possible telemedicine (monitoring, examining, or operating on patients remotely). A logical extension of this has a surgeon in one location hooked up to a virtual reality control panel and a robot in another location (maybe an entire continent away) wielding the knife. The best-known example of this is the daVinci surgical robot, released in 2009, of which several thousand have now been installed in hospitals worldwide. Introduce collaboration and there's the possibility of a whole group of the world's best surgeons working together on a particularly difficult operationa kind of WikiSurgery, if you like!

Architects used to build models out of card and paper; now they're much more likely to build virtual reality computer models you can walk through and explore. By the same token, it's generally much cheaper to design cars, airplanes, and other complex, expensive vehicles on a computer screen than to model them in wood, plastic, or other real-world materials. This is an area where virtual reality overlaps with computer modeling: instead of simply making an immersive 3D visual model for people to inspect and explore, you're creating a mathematical model that can be tested for its aerodynamic, safety, or other qualities.

From flight simulators to race-car games, VR has long hovered on the edges of the gaming worldnever quite good enough to revolutionize the experience of gamers, largely due to computers being too slow, displays lacking full 3D, and the lack of decent HMDs and datagloves. All that may be about to change with the development of affordable new peripherals like the Oculus Rift.

Like any technology, virtual reality has both good and bad points. How many of us would rather have a complex brain operation carried out by a surgeon trained in VR, compared to someone who has merely read books or watched over the shoulders of their peers? How many of us would rather practice our driving on a car simulator before we set foot on the road? Or sit back and relax in a Jumbo Jet, confident in the knowledge that our pilot practiced landing at this very airport, dozens of times, in a VR simulator before she ever set foot in a real cockpit?

Critics always raise the risk that people may be seduced by alternative realities to the point of neglecting their real-world livesbut that criticism has been leveled at everything from radio and TV to computer games and the Internet. And, at some point, it becomes a philosophical and ethical question: What is real anyway? And who is to say which is the better way to pass your time? Like many technologies, VR takes little or nothing away from the real world: you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

The promise of VR has loomed large over the world of computing for at least the last quarter centurybut remains largely unfulfilled. While science, architecture, medicine, and the military all rely on VR technology in different ways, mainstream adoption remains virtually nonexistent; we're not routinely using VR the way we use computers, smartphones, or the Internet. But the 2014 acquisition of VR company Oculus, by Facebook, greatly renewed interest in the area and could change everything. Facebook's basic idea is to let people share things with their friends using the Internet and the Web. What if you could share not simply a photo or a link to a Web article but an entire experience? Instead of sharing photos of your wedding with your Facebook friends, what if you could make it possible for people to attend your wedding remotely, in virtual reality, in perpetuity? What if we could record historical events in such a way that people could experience them again and again, forever more? These are the sorts of social, collaborative virtual reality sharing that (we might guess) Facebook is thinking about exploring right now. If so, the future of virtual reality looks very bright indeed!

So much for the future, but what of the past. Virtual reality has a long and very rich history. Here are a few of the more interesting highlights...

Artwork: The first virtual reality machine? Morton Heilig's 1962 Sensorama. Picture courtesy US Patent and Trademark Office.

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What is virtual reality? - A simple introduction

Main TERM V An artificial environment created with computer hardware and software and presented to the user in such a way that it appears and feels like a real environment. To "enter" a virtual reality, a user dons special gloves, earphones, and goggles, all of which receive their input from the computer system. In this way, at least three of the five senses are controlled by the computer. In addition to feeding sensory input to the user, the devices also monitor the user's actions. The goggles, for example, track how the eyes move and respond accordingly by sending new video input.

To date, virtual reality systems require extremely expensive hardware and software and are confined mostly to research laboratories.

The term virtual reality is sometimes used more generally to refer to any virtual world represented in a computer, even if it's just a text-based or graphical representation.

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